In the subscription edition of "A Little Book of Western Verse," of which I had all the labor and none of the fleeting fame of publisher, Field dedicated his paraphrase of the Twenty-third Psalm to Mr. Gray, and it was to this constant friend of his youth and manhood, who still survives (1901), that Field indited the beautiful dedication of "The Sabine Farm":
Come dear old friend! and with us twain
To calm Digentian groves repair;
The turtle coos his sweet refrain
And posies are a-blooming there,
And there the romping Sabine girls
With myrtle braid their lustrous curls.
I have followed the original copy Field sent to Mr. Gray, which has several variations in punctuation from the version as printed in "The Sabine Farm," where the eighth line reads:
Bind myrtle in their lustrous curls,